Chapter 32 — Conversation with the Guild Master
Chapter 32 — Conversation with the Guild Master
I returned to the city with a genuine feeling of victory. The rigor of intensive training was finally yielding tangible results. Walking right beside me, however, was an expression of absolute perplexity: Katriny struggled to assimilate the abstract concept of psychokinesis. Throughout the entire way back, I tried to detail the mechanics of projecting force vectors and moving objects without physical touch, but each theoretical explanation only seemed to thicken the doubts on the monk's face. Still, the satisfaction was mutual. After all, neutralizing nine ordinary wolves and a colossal Alpha specimen — a true beast the size of a war horse — validated the practical advancement of my psion abilities.
As we crossed the gates of the adventurers' guild once again, I noticed that the main hall was considerably busier than it had been in the morning. It was precisely at that moment that my stomach growled, reminding me of a crucial detail: we had left the fortress in the morning, and between the hike, the gathering, and the combat, it was already past four in the afternoon without us having so much as tasted a single meal.
Katriny led me straight to the receptionist and requested a reserved room to carry out the formal delivery of the mission in an isolated, private environment. The canine-featured clerk cast a startled look at her, but pointed silently to a side corridor.
— Katriny, why all this mystery? — I whispered. — Wouldn't it be much faster to empty the sacks directly on the reception counter?
We followed a dark corridor to a spacious storage room that functioned as a sorting chamber. There, Katriny clarified the reason for the discretion to the attendant who accompanied us:
— Our demand is clear — decreed the panda-monk, adjusting her leather bracers. — We don't want others to know how we got what we have. The guild can record the achievements on the scrolls, but be discreet about how we did the work. Also, don't mention to anyone that we carry an enchanted pouch, nor reveal our families.
The rigidity and firmness in Katriny's voice positively surprised me. However, the impact on the clerk was even greater; the poor thing stuttered visibly before managing to nod.
It was then that Katriny untied the cords of the spatial pouch and dumped the result of our botanical harvest onto the rustic wooden table. While she had gathered thirteen specimens, I had added twenty-six more, totaling thirty-nine medicinal herbs in a perfect state of preservation. The receptionist widened her eyes at that impeccable volume, questioning how we had managed to get so many rare plants, whose collection at this time of year was usually fruitless.
— We found them all in an isolated clearing deep within the Black Forest. — I replied naturally.
I only had to mention the name of the woods for the attendant's face to lose all its color, turning as pale as wax. She stepped back, terrified:
— Have you lost your minds?! There are persistent reports about the movement of a Dire Wolf prowling the region accompanied by an entire pack. The exact number of beasts has never been confirmed, but the council has already issued hunting orders restricted exclusively to experienced teams of rank C and above.
To deal the final blow to her sanity, Katriny pulled the smaller carcasses of the slaughtered wolves from her inventory and displayed the irrefutable proof of the Alpha's death.
I felt a twinge of genuine pity for the young woman. Her legs gave way so badly that she collapsed onto the floor, trembling from head to foot while repeating in an incredulous whisper:
— Wait... Wait... How on earth is this possible...?
Recovering a shred of composure, she stood up in a hurry, groping the wall, and bolted down the corridor:
— Wait a moment here!
We were confined in that storage room for over thirty minutes, boredom beginning to gnaw at my patience.
Until the heavy door creaked open and a burly man entered the room. Possessing a muscular physique, the individual displayed a body marked by scars from old battles and sported deep dark circles under his eyes, characteristic of someone accumulating piles of bureaucratic paperwork.
As I stared at him, my analytical brain triggered an automatic thought: A corporate work slave... My sincere condolences, I thought, suppressing a solitary chuckle.
The newcomer fixed his eyes on me, measuring me from top to bottom with evident skepticism, before transferring his analytical judgment to Katriny. His voice was sharp and direct:
— Were you the ones who registered the elimination of the Dire Wolf? Don't you think it's a bit too childish to try to pull off a farce of this caliber? A twelve-year-old child and a heteromorph taking on the work of a group of veteran mercenaries? Where do you intend to go with this bad taste joke?
Katriny's reaction was immediate; the Guild Master's aggressive tone deeply wounded the monk's pride, and she was already opening her mouth to retort when I stepped forward, taking control of the situation.
I stared at him with absolute coldness:
— Pardon me, but what is your name, sir? Or is your manners as outdated as your logical reasoning capacity?
The man stopped dead, his face contracting in pure indignation:
— Why, you insolent little brat! First you try to defraud my guild's records with fake trophies, and now you dare offend me with cheap provocations? Let me tell you, this little stunt won't end well for you...
I shrugged, letting out an ironic sigh:
— Oh, really? What are you going to do? Cancel our apprentice cards? Don't you think it's an extremely childish attitude on your part not to even bother testing our technical capability? Tell me: why don't you come to the arena and try to challenge me personally to find out if what we say is true? Or is the illustrious master afraid of being defeated by a twelve-year-old child?
The man's face turned a ruddy shade of suppressed rage:
— You are incredibly cheeky, kid! For the record, my name is Tom — he barked, pointing a heavy finger in my direction —, and you'd better memorize that name well, because I'm going to teach you the biggest moral lesson of your life the hard way!
— Perfect. Lead the way. — I retorted with a corner-of-the-mouth smile.
The air in the guild's indoor training area was densely loaded with the rancid aroma of shaved wood, fresh sweat, and fine dust suspended by heavy footsteps. As soon as the buzz echoed, the veteran mercenaries crossing the courtyard interrupted their activities, drawn by the unmistakable scent of an impending confrontation.
To Tom, the Guild Master, the narrative that a child and a monk had decimated a pack and an alpha predator was nothing more than a pathetic tavern boast. Crossing his thick arms, scarred by war mutilations, he scoffed with disdain and spat on the packed earth.
— Lying little piece of work — Tom's voice thundered, overflowing with contempt. He snatched a heavy two-handed bastard sword, sculpted in solid hardwood, from the rack and rested it casually on his shoulder. — The real world outside these walls crushes arrogant brats even before breakfast. Since your tutors failed miserably in raising you, Master here is going to give you a practical demonstration of harsh reality. No cuts and no privileges; I'm going to turn your backside purple enough for you to learn never to invent fairy tales again. Come on!
Tom settled into his classic martial combat stance: firm bases, lowered center of gravity, and the blunt tip of the heavy wooden weapon pointed directly at the center of my chest. In his tactical mindset, the outcome was elementary: an explosive advance, an psychological impact blow, and a quick lesson in humility. He foresaw not the slightest risk.
For my part, I remained perfectly static. Although my short daggers were strapped to my belt, the real arsenal operated invisibly in my cortex. With psychometry active, I read the opponent's micro-signals, the steady breathing rhythm of someone underestimating the attack vector, and the mechanical inertia that a weapon of that size required.
— Let's see if you can handle the real weight, kid! — Tom roared.
With a brutal contraction of muscle fibers, the Guild Master bolted forward. Triggering a subsidiary gust of wind and fire elemental energy on the soles of his boots, he closed the distance in the blink of an eye. The heavy sword hissed as it cut through the air, dragging waves of compressed thermal friction.
The blow collapsed vertically with devastating force, designed to cleave me in half.
Thanks to my three-second precognition window, I had already visualized that catastrophic scenario even before his muscle contracted. Blocking that mass directly would crush my bones under the inertia. At the last microsecond, I triggered a pulse of psychokinesis under my own heels and shot upward, leaping vertically out of the lethal radius.
Tom's blade crushed the vacuum and smashed against the stone floor with a deafening crash (CRASH!). A cloud of dust billowed in a fan, and the very centrifugal force of the unguided blow dragged the veteran's body forward.
— What?! He's absurdly fast... but he fell right into my trap! — Tom thought.
Taking advantage of the exact second when Tom struggled to rebalance his unguided posture, I remained suspended in mid-air by kinetic levitation, stretched out my arm, and used my mind to snatch five wooden swords from the arena's side racks. The weapons shot out like crossbow bolts, orbiting me in a defensive ring.
With a dry gesture, I projected three of them in a barrage against the Guild Master's flank, while keeping the other two spinning in piercing mode around me.
Tom widened his eyes in surprise. — What kind of martial sorcery is this?! He moves objects without touching them?! — he muttered to himself. The veteran's blood boiled with pure adrenaline.
Despite the element of surprise, years of barracks life saved his skin. He drove the heavy weapon into the ground and spun his own body with a controlled discharge of igneous energy, generating a radial thermal shockwave that deflected the three thrown swords, making them embed themselves harmlessly in the dirt behind him. Rolling through the dust, he hoisted himself back up onto one knee, panting, but with a wild and hungry grin stamped on his face.
— Now that's more like it! — Tom laughed out loud, his initial irritation completely consumed by the fire of battle. — That's exactly what I was talking about! Show me your whole repertoire, kid!
I absorbed the kinetic energy of that moment. Knowing he anticipated a new frontal lunge, I decided to manipulate the veteran's expectations.
Feinting a direct charge through the air with a psychic impulse, I launched my body toward him. Tom broke into a grin of anticipated victory, cocking a monstrous lateral arc to intercept me in mid-flight.
— Got you mid-jump! — Tom shouted.
At the exact millisecond he unleashed the full force of the blow, I interrupted my advance: I braked sharply in mid-air. Tom's stroke cut through nothing more than a gust of empty wind.
And that was when the trap closed with surgical precision.
The two remaining swords hovered inertly at my side. With a dry mental command, I activated cryokinesis, dropping the internal temperature of both to thirty degrees below zero instantly. The solid wood weapons coated themselves in a thick layer of ice crystals and freezing mist.
With his guard completely wide open and his arms stretched by the force of his own frustrated blow, Tom thrust his torso directly into that plume of polar cold.
CRACK!
The frozen swords collided with brutal force against the Guild Master's forearms and chest. The thermal shock operated instantaneously.
Tom muttered: — Damn it... Ice?! My arms... I've lost control of the muscles!
The extreme cold locked Tom's motor fibers in the exact same fraction of a second. The heavy wooden weapon slipped from his numb fingers, dropping to the dirt with a muffled thump. Staggering backward and trembling, he tried in vain to stimulate circulation in his numbed limbs, staring at me with an expression of pure and raw incredulity.
The training courtyard fell into absolute silence.
I landed softly on the packed earth, straightened my posture, took a step forward, and uttered the words that sealed the duel's outcome:
— The combat ends here.
With a shrill mental click, I released the apex of my psychokinetic field. Fifty wooden swords scattered across all the guild's racks erupted at once, shooting at high speed toward the center of the arena. In less than a second, a perfect geometric sphere of blades surrounded Tom from every imaginable direction — zenith, nadir, and flanks — with their tips pointing less than five centimeters from his skin.
Lifting my gaze seriously, I launched the final question:
— Do you acknowledge our effort now?
Tom swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down with difficulty. He glanced sideways at the wooden tip embedded centimeters from his nose, then at the one hovering perfectly aligned with his nape, and finally fixed his eyes on me — a twelve-year-old boy who had completely neutralized him without shedding a single drop of blood.
Arrogance faded from his countenance, replaced by a deep sigh of unconditional surrender. He raised his empty hands in a truce sign, breaking into a crooked smile as he shook his head in denial.
— Ha... Haha... By the ancient gods... — Tom laughed weakly, casting a glance at the gaping audience around and returning his eyes to me with a genuine glint of respect. — All right, kid. You won hands down. I was an arrogant asshole for underestimating you. As for the story about the pack... well, after this, I don't doubt absolutely anything anymore.
With a subtle hand gesture, I deactivated the sword structure, which fell in a disordered and harmless heap around him. Tom retrieved his heavy weapon from the ground, rested it on his shoulder, and extended his free hand, sealing the mutual respect earned on the basis of technique.
It was precisely at that critical instant that the Sub Guild Master — his loyal helper and wife, Mia — emerged from the crowd, approaching with firm strides to deliver a resounding slap to the back of her husband's head.
— Have you lost your mind, you idiot?! Get into the back room right now! — she scolded.
Under the weight of his wife's scolding, the imposing Guild Master slumped his shoulders, suddenly looking like a helpless child lost at a fair. Under the watchful eyes of those present, everyone migrated to the private management office.
Inside, Mia launched an implacable reprimand against Tom, pointing an accusing finger:
— You don't have an ounce of common sense! You're still that stubborn irresponsible who thinks everything in life is resolved through brute force!
Tom confined himself to staring at the floor, wearing an expression of total marital submission.
Turning abruptly to Katriny and me, Mia altered her tone to polite courtesy:
— I offer my deepest apologies to young master Vance and his guard on behalf of this guild and this hard-headed husband of mine. I personally guarantee the payment of a substantial financial bonus for this hunt; regarding the wolf carcasses, we need to await technical dismantling processing to stipulate the exact taxation, but I assure you we will make a fair deal. I only ask you one thing earnestly: please, do not mention this little... shall we say, roadside incident to your father.
Surprised that she had identified my origin immediately, I arched my eyebrows:
— Pardon me, but... how did you know who I am?
Mia flashed a discreet smile:
— We have an old acquaintance in common: master blacksmith Balin. Given the circumstances of your special blade orders, it would be impossible for me not to be briefed on your profile.
Tom, still dizzy from the turn of events, stammered without understanding:
— But, Mia... he is...
— Shut up, Tom! Do you have any idea what diplomatic mess you would have gotten us into if you had injured the Marquess's heir? — she cut in harshly, turning to her husband. — Besides, after this practical demonstration, do you still dare doubt that he is fully capable of killing a pack?!
Renewing her formal apologies for the disturbance, Mia released us to return to the family estate.
As soon as we crossed the guild's gates and took the path back home, Katriny broke the silence, crossing her arms with a disgruntled pout:
— Young master... are you still keeping secrets from me? Do you perhaps not trust my loyalty yet?
I let out a light laugh, shaking my head at the monk's professional jealousy:
— It's not a matter of distrust, Katriny. I learned early on that every real warrior needs to keep cards up their sleeve and unpredictable resources; otherwise, how do you deal with a critical emergency when things close in? Besides, you possess martial knowledge well above the local average, you just need to learn to look beyond the conventional. Now let's pick up the pace toward home; after all, we completed our mission with honors and already won the day.
